"As I often ask, what shall we do with the white
people? When an entire social structure has been erected to reinforce the lie
that white folks are "normal", and those "Others" are
"deviant" or "defective," it can be very difficult to break
out of that haze of denial. Such an act requires a commitment to truth-telling
and personal, critical, self-reflection that Whiteness, by definition, denies
to most of its owners

"White
privilege and Whiteness hurts white people. Aggrieved white male entitlement
syndrome is killing white folks' children, wives, daughters, sons, fathers, and
mothers. Yet, White America stands mute. Again,
what shall we do with the white people...especially if they are so unwilling to
help themselves?"

Chauncey
might also have asked, when will the white people start taking care of
themselves? If you have an answer for her, let her know.

Diversity breaking into more lit cons

Author Matt
de la Peña put out a call for people attending BookCon to join a discussion today,
Saturday. Your voice and input are needed.

Description:After
taking the Internet by storm, the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign is moving
forward with brand new initiatives to continue the call for diversity in
children’s literature. Join the WNDB team as they share highlights of their
campaign, discuss the success of grassroots activism, highlight diverse books
and how everyone can diversify their shelves and talk next steps for the
campaign.

Speaking of #WeNeedDiverseBooks, the postings of Cultivating
Invisibility: Chipotle's Missing Mexicans are still cooking plenty of menudo
picoso. Read and join them.

Damien Walter puts it to the SciFi/Fantasy moguls

How some feel about diversity entering the SF/F world

Latino and
other voices in SciFi and fantasy lit raising questions of white privilege,
exclusion of minorities and an end to non-diversity seem to be gaining ground.
So much so, that a backlash arose around the Hugo awards for best fantasy and
sci-fi this year. Here's some of Damien Walter's explanation about this in his
piece, Science fiction's real-life war of the worlds.

"For many years, a very particular and very narrow set
of authors has dominated SF. But battle for a broader fictional universe is
under way. It is no coincidence that, just as it outgrows its limiting cultural
biases, science fiction should also face protests from some members of the
predominantly white male audience who believed it to be their rightful domain.
What the conservative authors protesting the Hugo awards perceive as a liberal
clique is simply science fiction outgrowing them, and their narrow conception
of the genre's worth.

"The
real prize for science fiction is not diversity for diversity's sake (although
I happen to believe that would be prize enough). We live in a world of seven
billion human beings, whose culture has not been reflected or rewarded in 'the
mainstream'. Science fiction – from cult novels that reach a few thousand
readers, to blockbuster movies and video games that dominate contemporary
culture – has the potential to talk across every remaining boundary in our
modern world. That makes it, in my opinion, potentially the most important
cultural form of the 21st century. To claim that potential, it cannot afford to
give way to the petulant protests of boys who do not like to share their toys."

By age 12,
Roske-Martinez had organized more than 35 rallies and protests. He helped stop
the use of pesticides in city parks, and was among the fiercest advocates for a
fee on plastic bags. His was a key voice in a project to contain coal ash, and
to end a 20-year contract with Xcel Energy, allowing the city to pursue
renewable energy as its primary resource.

His
passions include hip-hop, participating in the annual sacred running relay from
the Hopi reservation to Mexico, the current Earth Guardian campaign (a
tree-planting project in 20 countries) and the summer Earth Guardian campaign
to clean and protect potable water.

"This
year, we're focusing on protecting one of the four elements every three months.
The first quarter, it was Earth, and we did tree-planting. This summer, it will
be water, and a group of 500-plus kids in Togo, Africa, will focus on that.
This is about us saving the world for ourselves. I share facts about our
environmental and climate- change crises. We are fighting for the survival of
our generation and the health of the waters, the air, our community. We are
fighting for kids everywhere."

[from the bookstore website]Mystery
lovers, join us for readings by Sergio Troncoso, Lyn Di Iorio and
Richie Narvaez. Troncoso reads from a 2014 revised and updated edition
of The Nature of Truth, a novel about Helmut Sanchez, a
young researcher at Yale, who discovers that his boss, a renowned
professor, hides a Nazi past. Di Iorio is the author of the novel Outside the Bones and scholarly books on Caribbean literature and magical realism. Narvaez is the author of Roachkiller and Other Stories, which won an International Latino Book Award for Best eBook/Fiction.

Come out to see some of the newest and hottest crime writers who just happen to be Latino. Lyn Di Iorio (Outside the Bones), R. Narvaez (Roachkiller and Other Stories), Alex Segura (Silent City), and Steven Torres (The Concrete Maze) will read from their works, discuss issues regarding writing and culture, and take questions from the audience.

The panel will take place Saturday, June 7, 7:00 p.m., at Enigma Bookstore, 33-17 Crescent Street, Astoria, New York 11106.

La Bloga friend Gloria Velásquez signs and reads from her latest novel, Tommy Stands Tall, ninth installment in the Roosevelt High School series. Congrats to Gloria!

"This is a great story about a diverse group of students who decide to take a stand. ... I liked that the characters were culturally and racially diverse and the message is clear and positive. There is a need for stories about students of color, particularly Hispanic students, and this series fills that need." --Washington Young Adult Review Group

[from publicity for the event]

Internationally acclaimed author Gloria L. Velásquez will autograph her newest novel, Tommy Stands Tall, on Saturday, May 31st from 2-3 pm at Barnes and Noble in San Luis Obispo. Tommy Stands Tall is the sequel to Tommy Stands Alone, which made national headlines when it was banned in Colorado.

For further information about the author and recent speaking engagements:

This traveling arts festival and workshop series will feature local and national visual artists, performers, organizers and advocates to uplift migrant stories and speak out against unjust policies and practices that discriminate against LGBTQ communities and people of color.

Both days of this multidisciplinary, free event are open to all community members and will feature performances, art installations, and workshops featuring leaders and artists engaged in social and racial justice activism.

An artist showcase and concert will feature visual and performances artists from Atlanta and across the nation, including an all-star band featuring Ceci Bastida, formerly of Tijuana No!; Raul Pacheco, of Grammy-winning Ozomatli; and Shawn King, of Grammy-nominated DeVotchka.

UndocuNation is rooted in the conviction that art, music and creativity can transform the debate around immigration. UndocuNation seeks to uplift creative activism and provide communities with the tools to address threats to civil liberties at the intersection of our nation’s most pressing social justice issues. Art and culture, together with community organizing, is a powerful vehicle to advance the rights of marginalized people and diminish the impact of discriminatory activity at the local level. History shows that when culture changes, politics follow.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

The Cultura wars are always going on in the twilight zone between the Anglo and Latino Americas. The latest has to do with Chipotle, a corporate chain with a Nahuatl name that is trying to make Mexican food classy, so that folks who suck down Starbucks coffee all day can feel superior to the gente who like home-style cooking. Post-Ethnic America wants classy, upscale taco stands, culture, rather than Cultura, which is why they had bestselling-author Jonathan Safran Foer come up with a “branding campaign” called Cultivating Thought.

People need to have their thoughts cultivated? I though they came naturally. What kind of dystopian mind-control is this?

Cultivating Thought will put short stories by “award-winning authors, as well as celebrities” on cups and bags. Unfortunately they did not include any Latino authors, which of course has caused a backlash.

La Bloga’s own Rudy Ch. Garcia got into the act. he posted this on Facebook:

LatinoStory4Chipotle

What we can do to answer Chipotles' exclusion of latino writers--

1. Make up our own story (250 words, max)

2. Use your favorite LOCAL latino restaurant's logo or slogan

3. Identify your city, and share your piece across the country.

4. You can use the LatinoStory4Chipotle tag

I'm working on mine. Even if you're not, spread the word, por favor.

I was amused. I usually don’t participate in things like this, especially if they have a list of requirements, but inspiration hit me like sniper’s bullet, and the following story squirted out of my scrambled brain:

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this,” said Victor’s brain. It began to glow with a pulsating yellow light, accompanied by an electronic whine. They pulsed and throbbed faster and faster.

Soon I was dizzy and couldn’t see.

The next thing I knew I was in my backyard, seated in full-lotus position facing the big cow skull. I had the aftertaste of salsa in my mouth and a tingling in my inner ears. When I got up and peered over the fence, everything looked wrong.

Instead of our neighborhood, I saw a Martian landscape, just like the NASA photos. Except there was a Chipotle on a nearby hill. It was burning.

I asked my wife, “Did we always live on Mars?”

It’s my usual schtick -- surreal imagery hung on a pulp framework. The word “sci-fi” is in the title, but it’s not really science fiction, probably more like speculative fiction, magic realism, or some such conceit, but we’ll let future generations figure that out.

You can enjoy the quick weird jolt without knowing whothehell Victor Theremin or Flash Gomez are, but if you’re curious you can investigate.

I do like the idea of putting stories on cups, bags, T-shirts, the social media and such. We writers are going to need to get creative as big time publishing heads for disaster.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Nursery rhymes are considered an important source of cultural heritage. Through music, individuals can experience joy, hope, honesty, and friendship.Señor Pancho Had a Rancho is written by Salvadorean award-winning author René Colato Laínez and humorously illustrated by Elwood Smith. Colato Laínez takes young readers through an incredible bilingual music journey to the farm along with Old McDonald and Señor Pancho. Old McDonald speaks English and his animal, too. Old McDonald’s animals make enthusiastic voices in the farm. The cow moos, the rooster crows cock-a-doodle-doos, the dog woofs, the sheep baas, the horse neighs, and the chick peeps. On the other hand, Señor Pancho speaks Spanish and his animals, too. They greet Señor Pancho like this: la vaca says muu, el gallo sings quiquiriquí, el perro says guau guau, la oveja pronounces a high bee bee, el caballo says a noisy jii jii, and el pollito a soft pío pío here and there. Both farmers and their animals have a great time together, but at the end of the day, Old McDonald and Señor Pancho realize they are not as distinct as they seem when they first meet. Instead, they discover more things in common that allow them to spend the rest of the evening dancing and singing E-I-E-I-O and cha-cha-cha- cha-cha. The moral of Señor Pancho Had a Rancho is that in order to have fun and be friends, one needs to learn how to embrace each other’s differences. Visit your local library to read more amazing stories. ¡Adiós!

I reshelved the paperback, The World’s Great Short Stories, satisfied that this 1960s era collection, from my English major years in a pre-homicidal Isla Vista, still had moxie. I love old gems like “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “Big Blonde,” de Maupassant in translation. In fact, nostalgic pangs rose for Bocaccio, Chaucer, the whole shebang of Euro-United Statesian belles lettres, until I shook off looking back. Instead, I picked up a copy of Xánath Caraza’s bilingual collection Lo que trae la marea What the Tide Brings. Welcome to the future.

Lo que trae la marea What the Tide Brings makes important contribution to understanding America’s contemporary literary environment. Written in Spanish and translated by a team including the author, the collection of Spanish-then-English stories doesn’t carve out readership so much as it opens markets on both sides of the nation’s and continent’s language frontera.

The publisher’s location in Spanglish-speaking El Paso positions Mouthfeel Press to ride the swell of a rising tide of books that take in the two dominant American readerships in a single volume. Such are few, but with publishers challenged to find new markets, chicana writers like Caraza-- a Mexicana who lives in Missouri—offer rich possibilities. Simultaneous translation welcomes monolinguals of either idiom while enriching a bilingual’s literary choices.

Lo que trae la marea What the Tide Brings features its Spanish-language version, followed by English. Language learners will appreciate an opportunity to flip from page to page to catch nuances in ways language works across meaning. Examples of these enrich the experience of each language’s expressive resources. The collection is rich in small triumphs of translation that add texture to one’s enjoyment.

A vivid example occurs in “After the Bridges.” A busy office slows down. Occupants notice the absence of noise. In English, silence intrudes on the natural order of the world of work:
“She knew that the end of the day was approaching because the pace was gradually slowing down. As the minutes went by, silence encroached upon them until almost no one,” 116

The difference between crecer and encroach elicits cultural approaches to workplaces. In Spanish,
silence enlarges naturally, evoking Boyle’s law that silence expands to fill the space where it belongs. In English, silence kicks down the door and takes over.

Among the highlights of the collection are Caraza’s masterful synaesthesia skills, exhibited in story after story. In “After the Bridges” the worker enjoys a cup of coffee accompanied by taste, smell, touch, color, vision, hearing:

“The next morning, as she took the first sip of coffee, she closed her eyes and inhaled the aroma of coffee with cardamom from her ceramic cup. With the first sip, she heard the sound of marimbas in the distance. With the second sip, the turquoise sky over the town square of La Antigua and its lush green trees materialized in her mind. Another sip of coffee and the candy vendors in the town square offered her white milk candy and shredded coconut sweets dyed pink.”117

In Lo que trae la marea / What the tide brings, Xánath Caraza puts together a fast-moving collection, varying the pace spacing one- and two-page pieces between more extended 5- or ten page stories. Each comes self-contained, no need to look for links from story to story. Each reads quickly, allowing the writer to sneak up on readers, leaving a reader leafing back a few paragraphs to confirm a detail, or to savor the synaesthesia of a moment, and especially to savor the magic that permeates nearly every story.

Among the most interesting of the puro magic stories is the sensual, “Café On Huanjue Xiang Street.” A woman wanders into a basement coffee den, the solitary customer. She drinks in the ambiente and passes out. When she comes to, the place is filled with stolid gente ignoring her. This key scene illustrates the skill Caraza weaves her magic pluma:

“She remained very attentive to the small blue flame that contrasted with the red, airy atmosphere of the place. She waited until the blue flame was extinguished while the coffee aroma penetrated her nose. She introduced the spoon into the black fluid, and as the sugar touched the coffee, a spirit emerged from the cup. The spirit wrapped around her in a smoky spiral. It traversed her, lightly touched her nipples and sex until she lost consciousness.” 128

Writers will take a lot of pleasure from the magic when a writer meets a mysterious stranger who hands her a book. Inside, the writer finds the finished story she has only drafted in her notebook. She reads it to find out how it comes out. Then there’s the teacher’s lament about the copier, how it transfers the teacher’s identity to the page and when the student answers the question the teacher feels each pen stroke on each of the hundred copies she ran through the copy machine. Caraza even gets in an hommage to Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” in her “Flower in the Mist.”

Lo que trae la marea/What the Tide Brings is not to be missed. A woman’s point of view, in the two dominant American languages, this book is the future of United States literature. It’s not a secret, it’s demographics. Salvation for American publishing means make the books American, like Lo que trae la marea/What the Tide Brings.

Stanford Book Club Choice: Give It To Me

Southern California Stanford Latina Latino Alumni Book Club meets regularly for company, food, and excellent discussions of a book by a Chicana Chicano Latina Latino writer.

The August 24, 2014 selection is Ana Castillo's Give It To Me.

The group meets at 1:00 p.m. in Monrovia, California. Click here for information.

The 3rd Annual Comadres and Compadres Writers Conference will provide Latino writers with access to published Latino authors as well as agents and editors who have a proven track record of publishing Latino books. We invite you to join us this year as a sponsor, advertiser, and/or attendee.

I am delighted to let you know that a revised and updated edition of my novel, The Nature of Truth, is now available in paperback for the first time (Arte Publico Press, 2014). I hope you will consider reading it. I wrote the novel because I loved that mix of philosophy and literature in writers like Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Camus, and Kafka, and also because I wanted to expand the literary terrain of Latino writers. I made some important changes in the plot and tightened the language, which I think makes this edition a better experience for readers.

Helmut Sanchez, a research assistant at Yale, discovers that his boss, a renowned professor, hides a Nazi past. By chance Helmut discovers an old letter written decades ago, which absolves Germany and Austria of any guilt for the Holocaust. As he digs into the origins of who wrote the letter, Helmut discovers it could be his boss, Werner Hopfgartner. Helmut travels to Austria and Italy with his girlfriend, Ariane Sassolini, in his quest to find the truth about Hopfgartner's past. Meanwhile, Professor Regina Neumann is determined to make Hopfgartner pay for his many sexual liaisons with undergraduate and graduate students. What will Helmut do with the awful truth he discovers? Will Werner Hopfgartner ever face justice for his past or present transgressions? Ultimately, what is the nature of truth?

Monday, May 26, 2014

Stephen D. Gutierrez is the author
of the recently-published The Mexican Man
in His Backyard, Stories and Essays (Roan Press). This completes his trilogy of autobiographical
and varied short stories he calls My
Three-Volume BOXED Set. Elements
(FC2), which won the Nilon Award from FC2, and
Live from Fresno y Los (Bear Star Press), winner of an American Book Award,
make up the rest of it. He has published
both fiction and creative nonfiction in many magazines, anthologies and
newspapers, including, most recently, New
California Writing 2013 (Heyday Books),
Catamaran Literary Reader, and Alaska
Quarterly Review. He is at work on a
new collection of stories based on his alter ego Walter C. Ramirez. Gutierrez has also written plays that have
been performed in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Buffalo, New York. “Game
Day” was the winner of the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition in the One-Act
Category. He teaches fiction writing at
California State University East Bay.

Stephen D. Gutierrez

DANIEL OLIVAS: With The Mexican Man in His Backyard, you complete
a trilogy of books that focus on the people of Fresno and Los Angeles. Did you have a particular goal in writing
these three books?

STEPHEN GUTIERREZ: Not really. Only to put together some pieces that I
believed in and that hung together. They wouldn’t die. I wanted
them out there in book form. Of course, the fancier answer would be more
complicated and involved and literary, so let me at least try to be more
sophisticated: I wished to compile a cogent narrative using unorthodox and
orthodox techniques that captured the times and places of my life, and, by
extension, I hope, something about the spirit and flavor of my generation of
Mexican Americans. I wished for certain pieces to live – embellishing my
first answer – a little longer than their lifespans in the magazines they first
appeared in. I desired this because they seemed healthy compared to the
rest out there, the noted and honored and drooled over. ”The fine, the
great.” Well, there’s not really much that is great out there, the
accolades aside. But I sound really pissy and envious there, and I
am, everybody is. I wanted to write and publish My Three-Volume BOXED
Set because there’s some crazy shit in there like nobody else’s. ”Yup,
I gotta’ keep on and get this out there.” I kept repeating this kind of
encouragement to myself: ”I too belong in the library being filled by my
generation of American writers. I got to keep plugging away and working
because there aren’t enough Gutierrez’ in the stacks. I got to leave something
behind that says I lived.”

DO: Your
stories and essays drill down on what some might call those small,
everyday events that make up most of our lives. Yet out of these events (that
are simultaneously humorous and heartbreaking), your characters often
grow or come to some kind of understanding about themselves or the world around
them. What keeps you, as a writer,
within the bounds of ordinary lives as opposed to grander events and themes?

SG:Small things in life are what tear me
apart as opposed to the great doings in the world at any given time. Let
me admit an awful truth: I don’t really care about Ukraine right now, or Syria,
or any given situation that people mumble in sympathy about. At least, I
don’t really feel that turmoil and pain those people must be experiencing, so I
couldn’t possibly imagine writing about these great events with any authority
or passion or concern. Granted, you might not be talking about political
events or extraordinary occurrences in the world at all, but about the enduring
themes we all live through or learn about: love, aging, death, etc.
My answer then is not surprising. All these truths can best be
approached by the way they most often present themselves, at least to me.
They enter stealthily, in subtle movements and gestures that signal more
about the unfathomable mysteries they contain than the bald fact of their
existence. Death in a coffin is nothing. Terror exposed in the eyes
of a grandmother who isn’t ready to go yet but denies fear of death, is
everything. I could go on and on. Life is symbolic, and is
revealing its great messages in coded moments incessantly, continually. I
like to think my antennae are up in the everyday world and foggy in the grand
sphere of the cosmos. I don’t get God. I get a burnt tortilla on
the worst day of your life being the end of it all.

DO: One
of my favorite pieces in your new collection is “La Muerte Hace Tortillas”
probably because it touches on that treacherous terrain of the father-son
relationship. Can you talk a little
about how that story came about?

SG:
It is autobiographical. My dad was afflicted with
a terrible disease early on, its aggravating symptoms appearing from the
time I was born to his wretched, painful, god-awful demise in a convalescent
room bed eighteen years later. A terrible end, just terrible.
He was embarrassing to me much of the time, and I was ashamed
of him. That is, I lived in fear of being embarrassed by him, so existed
in an unseen shroud of shame. It still covers me partly, but this answer
has enabled me to slip out from under it again, as I am able to
do with greater frequency, so thank you for that. My dad was a
hardworking, honorable man with a certain nobility to him because
of what he suffered and endured with grace and courage, all for his
family. But the rough times I speak of in that piece were rough.
Certain days seemed like gifts from the gods – God! did I mention God before? – and this piece honors one of those days, exploring
those tensions that rip the narrator apart usually but disappear
in the fact of love and joy here – of a perfect day, when Death and Sickness
and Despair do make tortillas, and tortillas are life. A crazy Chicano
activist threw the finger at us and I had to throw the finger back at
him is another answer.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

What is your relationship to
your hair?How much time do you
fuss with it?How much is it bound
up with your identity?I was
cruising the Facebook News Feed during a break from my writing a few days ago, and suddenly I
came upon someone posting a new Pola Lopez painting.This one:

Without thinking much, I said out loud, “Wow—that’s me.”And then I asked myself, “why?” What
was it about this painting that made me relate so strongly?“It’s the hair and the colors,” I
said.I looked at Lopez’s figure with the brilliantly colored jacket, its many symbols, the bold hat, the turquoise design on the belt, the black
pants.I liked it all.But at the center:“It’s the hair,” I repeated again. The hair is thick and strongly sectioned into the braided pattern. It's strong, like red stone bricks laid in place.

In her description, Pola Lopez writes: . . . the women in my lineage of Apache, Spanish, and French heritage, the “eye-dazzler” bolero represents a sacred geometry that is reflective of the tribal designs that runs through our blood and that we wear as symbols and reminders of what has maintained our survival. Every color of the rainbow and each line transmit to us spiritual strength and knowledge of being in balance with nature and all that creator has given and designed.

The color black is worn to offset and anchor the high-keyed colors of vibration. The Concha belt made of silver and turquoise is worn as tradition. The turquoise stone is the stone of spiritual protection. The cowboy hat acts as a southwest corona, and serves as protection from the blazing sun, but is also reflective of a life that knows horses, the range . . . wildlife.

The hands are held firmly on the strong swayed hips in confidence that I am here, and I know who I am. Lastly, the braid conveys the Native American belief that our hair is our antenna for energy, the connection to our culture, our power. In the end it may be a symbol for the weaving of the masculine and the feminine, the many different cultures that came together to make la mestizaje, and for remembering.

And perhaps "the weaving of the masculine and feminine" is what had caught my attention along with the centerpiece which, to me, is the hair. Chicana/Chicano and Latina/Latino hair are symbols of so much
history, identity issues, gender, sexuality, and queer discussions.Hair carries with it psychological, sociological, and political implications.And hairstyles are always changing.Writer, Sandra Cisneros’ children’s book, Hairs/Pelitos is a
celebration and tribute to the diversity among Chicanas/Chicanos and their
hair.

Writer, Norma Cantú’s latest
novel-in-progress, Champú, or Hair Matters, takes place in a hair salon, the center for cultural
and familial discussions while washing, cutting, and styling hair.Here’s a link to a section from the
novel (click here).

There is the well-known stereotype that if you are Chicana or Latina, you
should have (1) dark hair (definitely not blond or white) and (2) it better not
be muy short.No way (unless you're butch, queer, etc.).If you don’t fit this description, pues, how can you say you are Mexicana/Chicana/Latina?But my grandmother had white hair: thick white wavy plaits
down her back.My other
grandmother, Juanita, told me she had a long braid most of her early adulthood.
She would braid it and coil it up on her head.When she died, I remembered combing her grayed hair (not
short), and placing curled strands behind her ear.Both of them were born and raised in Mexico. They were
Mexicanas as were blonds, redheads, brunettes, and those with very dark shades
of black (almost blue) walking the streets of Mexico City, Oaxaca, Guanajuato,
Guadalajara, Coahuila, then up to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nevada, Tejas,
and north to the Midwest and the Eastern sections of the U.S.It’s all diferente.

My hair wound up in a bun

Blogger, Regina Rodriguez-Martín talks about hair in her post,
“Chicana w really short hair.”In
this brief post (with pictures) she explains that her short hair is a
statement, that she is not going to maintain long hair just to please men, or anyone.She wants to
simply express her own unique style. (Click here for posting)

On YouTube, there are hundreds of posted personal videos on hair style demonstrations. Two examples are the 2011 video posting which showcases the “40s
Reverse Pompadour/Pachuca hairstyle" (click here), and “Jasmine V's” posting demonstrating her favorite Latina hairstyles “for every occasion” (click here).

What is it, then, about hair and our Chicana or Latina identity?Are you less a Chicana or more a Latina
with a certain color and style of hair?There is some validity to the stereotype that hair length and color
identifies Latinidad.But stereotypes are about only one story. Believing only one story disadvantages everyone, because it erases the many wonderful exceptions and variations, and I'm thinking here of Chimamanda Adichie's TED talk on "The Danger of the Single Story." I am also thinking of Indra Lusero's performance piece, "The sexy chicana in me" which beautifully expresses her frustration at not being recognized for her queer Chicanidad. She says: "And they couldn't see my brown skin cousin Sylvia. They couldn't see [her] beneath my skin . . . " In returning to Pola Lopez’s painting as well as an additional one
on her website entitled, “La Trensa #2," (posted below), I offer my own journey to “pelo/hair
identity,” but with caution. The following is my pelo/hair personal story. It in no way establishes a definitive Chicana identity. My story "contributes" to the rich, diverse identities that comprise Chicanidad y Latinidad.

The “trensa” (braid) has been with me all of my life.My mother and I had a ritual most every
day when I was attending elementary school.She would
brush my hair and then firmly and tightly make two trensas (braids) or sometimes
one.I had (and still do have)
very thick hair and, at times, I either make my own trensa or wind the hair up
on the back of my head into a bun.Most days, it’s loose and reaches down to my waist. Since childhood,
my hair color has changed. At a very young age, my hair was the color of a carrot, later becoming a darker orange, and now, (with the use of
dye), it is a reddish auburn.

"La Trensa #2" copyright by Pola Lopez

In third grade, my teacher, Sister Mary Grosera (not her real name) was someone to fear. I was
one of two students she chose to pick on that year—don’t ask me why.One day, I begged mi mama not to pull
my hair into braids.I wanted to feel the hair loose down my waist.She let me go like that.It felt so good walking to school, feeling my hair uncontrolled and tousled by
the wind.Because my hair had been
in braids for so long, the humidity, and the wind, made the hair frizz out. By the time I got to school, my hair was one big expansive and glorious mess. I
didn’t care.It felt fun and
free.But inside the classroom, I
was headed for trouble.When
Sister Mary Grosera asked me to stand in front of the class to read, she told
the students to look at my hair.“Look at how wild and unkempt it is,” she said.“You look like a witch.”All the kids laughed, and for the rest
of the day, the bully kids called me “witch,” and “wild girl.”I kept my cool until I got home and
then cried as soon as I walked in the door.My grandmother and mama each took turns holding me.They told me stories about my aunts and
cousins in Mexico, how their hair was a source of pride.My grandmother told me that hair was a
symbol of strength.

Con mi Mama--giving her a self portrait with flying hair!

Since then, I’ve only cut my hair short once.Just once. I was in high school, feeling rebellious, and bold. I had continually been trimming it until it was almost up to my chin. It was Halloween, and there was
going to be a dance that night at the school gym.I dressed like a 50s motorcycle dude with jeans and a white
shirt, a pack of fake candy cigarettes in my shirt pocket. When I slicked back my hair,
it was too long.I cut, and cut, and cut, until it looked perfectly slicked back.I was transformed and oh so cool, I
thought.Ready to go.My motive was to dance with the lovely Carmen
Reyes.She was one of the
cheerleaders at the school and I was bound and determined to dance with
her.Hours later, I was doing just
that.Many students had no idea
who I was.Some did, but since it
was Halloween, no one thought it strange.I remember a circle formed around Carmen and I as we danced to Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “That’s the Way of The World.”Cutting my hair had been well worth enjoying that night with Carmen.

But after that dance, what to do with the hair left on my head?It was quite
wavy and curly in sections (unless I slicked it back).Every morning there was much fussing
with the hair and its stubborn waves.As I let it grow out, I endured each length until, many months later, the
hair finally reached beyond my shoulders and I could fling it into a bun,
ponytail, or braid.The longer it
grew, the better, because the weight of my heavy thick hair relaxed those wavy
curls.I was not a person who had
the patience for much attention to hair primping—and therein lies the reason
I’ve never wanted to cut it short ever again.The shorter it is, the more trouble it is for me.

Today: My hair in a braid (photo by John Raible)

And yes, identity is enfolded into this story too.I realize that my long hair falls into
the stereotype of the Chicana, and, I like the feeling of belonging in that
category.However, I’m also aware,
as I said earlier, that Chicanas/Latinas are all over the place (with hair that is
shoulder length, in a bob, shaved, etc.).The kind of attention I give my hair today is mainly about covering up
the grays.One of my colleagues
from another university once told me that she decided to let her gray grow out. She has long thick hair too.But she soon went back to covering up
her gray when she realized that with her white/gray hair, she was being identified as “white.”“I’m Chicana,” she told me.“I certainly don’t want to be thought
of as white.”

So I ask you, Querida y Querido La Bloga readers, what stories do
you have about your hair?Do you
feel your hair defines who you are? People often see my hair before they see
the rest of me.And that’s fine by
me.Pola Lopez’s trensa paintings
speak to me about my hair.Perhaps
Regina Rodriguez-Martin’s perspective (“Chicana w really short hair”) speaks to
you!Maybe this is the beginning
of a collection of writing on Chicana and Latina hair.What do you think?And if you like Pola Lopez’s work,
please click on her site to purchase her fabulous art work.Below is her bio and more of the description of her painting, “Eye-Dazzler-Southwest
Style" which started this writing for me. A shout out to Pola for giving me permission to use her work here. Gracias! Hopefully, she will, in turn, gain more fans!

Lopez is a prominent painter whose acrylic paintings are driven by
color and convey a multi-faceted array of symbolic cultural imagery infused
with spiritual vision and incendiary composition, which has established her as
a key LA artist in the Latina/Chicana/Mestiza genre, but whose works are also
accessible to a wider audience.

Pola Lopez (check out her cool pelo/hair!)

An active and full time professional artist, she maintains a
working studio/exhibit space known as 2 Tracks Studio in Highland Park, in
which she maintains an “open door” policy, making her work available to the
public, but exhibits widely in many other venues as well.

Through her involvement with several non-profit organizations, she
has completed several youth assisted murals within the community, and also
teaches and mentors youth at risk in alternative high schools, probation camps,
and juvenile halls.

Early this May of 2014 she collaborated with and mentored
graduating Occidental College students in completing a mural addressing
diversity. This work entitled “Educational Empowerment Mural,” is installed in
University Library.

Her
work has appeared in books and publications, and is widely collected by both
private patrons and held in public collection as well. In 2005, her work was
presented in the White House in Washington D.C., as the official portrait
artist of the People’s Holiday Tree, in which she was honored to represent her
home state of New Mexico.

This
painting was a special commission requested by someone who had always wanted to
commission a special work but had not decided on what the subject matter would
be.Due to the fact that I am from
New Mexico and grew up steeped in Southwest Style which for me, is a fusion and
juxtaposition of Native American, Mexican Charro, and a little bit of cow girl
attitude, this image seemed to convey it all, the perfect Mestiza.

To
begin with, the woman in the painting is of the “wild west” where the women in
my lineage of Apache, Spanish, and French heritage, the “eye-dazzler” bolero
represents a sacred geometry that is reflective of the tribal designs that runs
through our blood and that we wear as symbols and reminders of what has
maintained our survival.Every
color of the rainbow and each line transmit to us spiritual strength and
knowledge of being in balance with nature and all that creator has given and
designed.

The
color black is worn to offset and anchor the high-keyed colors of
vibration.The Concha belt made of
silver and turquoise is worn as tradition.The turquoise stone is the stone of spiritual
protection.The cowboy hat acts as
a southwest corona, and serves as protection from the blazing sun, but is also
reflective of a life that knows horses, the range . . . wildlife.

The
hands are held firmly on the strong swayed hips in confidence that I am here,
and I know who I am.Lastly, the
braid conveys the Native American belief that our hair is our antenna for
energy, the connection to our culture, our power.In the end it may be a symbol for the weaving of the
masculine and the feminine, the many different cultures that came together to
make la mestizaje, and for remembering.